


still, the tide rises

by tigerlo



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, F/F, a LOT of swearing in the first chapter too, and Villanelle's version of processing, and denial, just the f word though, nothing fancy, oh and smut eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-08 18:24:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19874059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerlo/pseuds/tigerlo
Summary: Fuck Eve for pretending that she could walk away.Fuck Eve for calling her bluff.Fuck Eve for thinking she was different enough to spare.(Picks up at the end of 2x08)





	1. One.

**Author's Note:**

> This little 2-chapter concept is something cathartic I wrote while trying to process the finale. It's probably riddled with inaccuracies and complications and all over the show, but hopefully the bones are good.

#####  **жизнь прожить не поле перейти**

(life is not a bed of roses)

.

Fuck Eve. 

Villanelle is seething, teeth clenched and vision red despite her external calm as she walks from the ruins. _Fuck Eve._ Fuck Eve for giving her no other choice. Fuck Eve for turning away. Fuck Eve for not just coming with her. Fuck Eve for being so stupid and naive to think either of them could ever go back to their old lives after this. 

Fuck Eve for thinking the world would just leave them alone after Aaron Peele’s death. Fuck Eve for thinking someone would get her out of this. Fuck Eve for thinking she could go home. 

There’s no home anymore. Not for her. Not for Villanelle. Not for Oksana either. They’re all as good as dead now, and it’s all Eve’s fault. Eve’s fault for not trusting her, Eve’s fault for seeing her actions as something as simple as manipulation and not something much, much deeper. Fuck Eve for not understanding what she has given up to be here. Fuck Eve for thinking that she’s the only one with feelings. 

Villanelle might be more volatile, she might be able to turn them off like the switch of a kettle but they’re still there. She has a heart; Eve’s seen the red pool in her own hands to prove it. She’s blood and bone and gristle and pain and rage and fury and defeat, now, and it’s all Eve’s fault. 

Fuck Eve for pretending that she could walk away. Fuck Eve for calling her bluff. Fuck Eve for thinking she was different enough to spare. 

_If I can’t have you, no one can. If I can’t have you, no one can. If I can’t have you, no one can. No one can no one can no one can. And now they never will._

Her parting gift isn’t an instantly fatal shot unless Eve has something nestled in amongst the tissue of her gut out of place, not unless something is twisted around another organ in a way it shouldn’t be. It’s not a fatal shot, no, but it’ll _hurt_. And that’s what she wants. She wants Eve to hurt like she does, she wants Eve to ache and scream and cry with the frustration of everything they could have had if she’d had the sense to understand. 

She knows she’s the only person on earth who could keep Eve safe because she knows she’s the only person on earth capable of breaking through whatever guard Carolyn and MI5, if they’re still in this game, might put around her. She’ll claw her way through whatever they put between the two of them if Eve survives, she’ll spit out a mouthful of blood at the end, wipe the scarlet from her lip and kiss the desire off Eve’s mouth as she watches Villanelle rise like Hades, like Lilith, drenched in blood and here, at the end of the game, at the end of all things, for her. 

They are the same, she knows it even if Eve denies it, even if Eve continues to until her dying breath leaves her. She knows because she’s watched; she’s seen the way Eve’s eyes go glassy at violence, at the rawness of a kill, not blank with disgust like everyone else’s do. Eve is like her, they’re the same, they’re soul mates, Eve is just too afraid to see it. She’s too afraid of what admitting that to herself will mean, but Villanelle can show her how good it is on the other side, she’ll show her how quickly one forgets what else there was beyond this. 

Fuck Eve for not admitting that this is everything, for not realising how much potential they have between them; how much power. Fuck Eve for not realising that they together could tear the fabric of reality apart if they set their mind to it. Fuck Eve for not realising that the two of them are a _force innarêtable_. Fuck her for not realising that they are the end of the world. 

She walks blindly until she finds Konstantin near the car. She smirks through her anger when he looks up at her from the steps; surprised. She knew he wouldn’t just leave. She knew he loved her even if he stubbornly persists on pretending to put his family first. 

“Where’s Eve?” he asks, looking to the blank space behind her. 

She shrugs. “Gone,” she says emotionlessly. 

_Turn it off_ , she thinks, biting the inside of her cheek until she can taste blood when Eve fills her mind. Turn it off. Fuck Eve. Turn it _off_. 

“Are you alright?” he asks, unable to help himself. 

“I thought you didn’t care about me?” she huffs dismissively.

“That’s not what I said,” he replies, clenching his jaw. He speaks after a considered moment, asks again in Russian, formally, with an authority that anyone else would listen to without hesitation. “Answer me, Villanelle who was Oksana,” he says in her own tongue, the sound of it making her lip twitch in anger. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she says in English, clenching her fists to stop herself from slapping him for his boldness. 

“What happened?” he asks, also in English. 

“She’s not ready,” she answers simply. 

“She is not the same as you after all, hmm?” he says, in statement not question. 

“No,” Villanelle snaps before she can stop the reaction. She smooths down the front of her outfit to calm herself. “No, she is,” Villanelle says adamantly. “She is,” she asserts, firmer than before, her tone dangerous in the face of Konstantin’s doubt. “She’s just…” she pauses. 

“Villanelle,” Konstantin says softly, like he’s walking on glass in bare feet. “You are better off without her. You know this.”

“Why?” she asks sharply. “Because I play your games better when I’m not distracted? Because I’m a better pet when I’m not thinking about how much I want to fuck her?”

“Because she is dangerous to you,” he counters, looking almost hurt at her insinuation. Almost. 

“I’m dangerous to her, too,” Villanelle shrugs, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She adjusts the gun discreetly when it rubs against her lower back, drawing it out and tucking it into her front waistband. 

Konstantin’s eyes open in realisation. “Give that to me,” he says, snatching it from her before she can argue. He ejects the magazine quickly, looking up at her with a frown when he registers the one missing round. “What happened?” he says again. A demand, not a question. 

“I shot her,” Villanelle replies, thinking of Anna as she does so. The softness of her palms on her naked skin after she’d stripped Villanelle bare. The way her hair had matted to the rug in death, sticky with blood. 

“Why?” he frowns, troubled. 

She shrugs again. “She wasn’t ready.” 

“Is she dead?” he asks slowly. 

“I don’t know,” Villanelle replies. “I shouldn’t think so.” She looks up, meeting his eye in a challenge. “I shot her in the stomach, not the chest. She’s not old like you and you survived.” Her hand floats to her scar, aching deeply all of a sudden as if the wound were connected to Eve, just as she had hoped it would be when she had aimed. 

“She doesn’t love you,” he says, and this time Villanelle isn’t sure whether it’s a question or not. 

The red flashes in front of her eyes again and her pulse thumps in her ears. “She does,” Villanelle says with forced calm, biting back her anger before she shrugs as if to prove her words true. She pulls her hair tie out, combing the loose strands back with her fingers before she loops the elastic around her gathered hair. Konstantin looks frustrated at her game, but she doesn’t care. She shrugs again. “She just wasn’t ready.” 

The look in Konstantin’s eyes is clear to her. Naievity. He’s always thought she was naive but she knows she’s far more shrewd than he gives her credit for. It would be naive to think Eve loved her if she hadn’t seen the way Eve looked at her, if she didn’t feel the heat of the way that Eve had hunted her, the way she had passed over and kicked down every warning sign in the way in her pursuit. 

Konstantin doesn’t understand what it means that Eve hadn’t killed her in Paris even though she had killed Bill, he doesn’t know what it means that Eve hadn’t strangled her in the loft apartment when she’d introduced her to Billie. Konstantin doesn’t understand what it means that Eve had fucked her husband after the flowers, _her_ flowers, arrived on Eve’s doorstep. Eve loves her, marrow and mind and body and soul; that’s why she ignored the warnings of Carolyn’s son, that’s why she ignored the warnings of her colleagues, of her husband, of Villanelle herself.

Love. Desire. Obsession. Konstantin doesn’t understand any of this because he hasn’t cared to look, he only sees the aesthetic cat and mouse game, he only sees the competition that is so much more than just that. He doesn’t look for the way Eve’s breath halts when she walks into a room, or the way that her eyes never really leave her. He doesn’t look, he doesn't _see_ , but if he did, he would understand in an instant. 

They are the same, but Eve is stubborn and proud and now perhaps dead. At least she’s left Villanelle with a scar on her stomach, woven poetically into her muscle, that, and a broken heart. _Oh well_ , she thinks as Konstantin gives her directions to a safe house apartment a few streets away; at least Eve left her with a memory of what it means to _feel_. 

.

The apartment is nicer than she had anticipated, rich carpets that feel freshly laid under her bare feet when she kicks her shoes off. She wondered how much blood stains the wood or concrete beneath her. She wonders how many of her colleagues have used this place; have killed here or died here. 

“Your clothes are in the bedroom,” Konstantin says, gesturing the door beside the fully stocked kitchen before he drops a set of keys on the tabletop for her. 

“My clothes?” she frowns, looking towards the door. 

“Aaron took them, no?” Konstantin replies casually. “We took them back.”

“You knew I would come here,” Villanelle says, turning to him as her lip curls over her teeth. She makes an effort to take the sharpness out of it, the snarl out of her tone, but Konstantin’s smile fades regardless. 

“I hoped,” he returns honestly before sighing, rubbing his hands over his face in exhaustion. “You will die with her, Villanelle,” he tells her. “I don’t want that. I had hoped you would come here, even though I knew it to be a desperate one, because if you were here, you were safer than with her. Is that a crime?”

She doesn’t reply right away, she walks to the bedroom in search of her clothes instead. Her suitcase is on the bed as promised and she opens it, setting the gun down finally so she can unzip it with both hands, folding one side back as she begins to check over the contents. 

She smiles as she runs her hands over the rich fabric of her clothes. Konstantin made sure to remove everything he deemed a weapon but he left the things most dangerous. She doesn’t need a knife or a gun to kill someone, but a good outfit is crucial. Opulent dress will get her places that mediocre clothes will not, they are her camouflage, they make her invisible, they put others around her at ease, and people are so much easier to kill when they’re not looking over their shoulders. 

Her clothes open doors and remove barriers and once she is there, once she is in a room that cannot be opened with a key but only welcomed into, she is as dangerous as an atom bomb. She lifts a dress of a rich black fabric that she was hoping Eve would peel off her, kissing the skin between her shoulder blades as she ran the zip down Villanelle’s back. Instead of that, of the two of them in the most expensive hotel room in Rome, instead of coming apart under Villanelle’s hands and teeth and tongue, Eve will have the richness of Roman dust to dine on as she bleeds into earth that has seen so much blood already, the fine powder sticking in her lungs, making her choke, driving the pain in her side deeper into the muscle until she can’t breathe. 

She can feel Konstantin hovering at the door, his worried eyes on her. He’s a fool if he thinks he doesn’t love me, she thinks to herself. A fool for not thinking that he is in more danger now with her here than he has ever been. He loves me, she smiles to herself. More than his family, or else he would have run as soon as Carolyn’s freedom made its way into his palm. 

“We will die with each other, I think,” she says after a moment of contemplation, letting the silk of one of her scarves run through her fingers like water. 

“That is still dying,” he says plainly. “Why do you want that so much? Why don’t you want to live? Why do you want her so badly?”

“Would you die for your wife, Konstantin? Even if you knew she was bad for you? Even if you knew the noose around your neck was her fault? Tied by her hands?”

“That is different,” he says. 

“Is it?” Villanelle asks, her eyes flashing. “How is it?” 

He doesn’t answer so she advances on him, smiling when he takes a step back.

“What do I have to live for, hmm?” she asks when she steps into the warmth of his personal space. She can feel his arms tensed at his sides and she raises her hand to prod at his shoulder when he doesn’t answer her. “Tell me, _father_ ,” she says mockingly. “What do I have to live for? Money? Boring. Clothes? Better, but still dull. A constant flight from MI5 or The Twelve? Why would I want any of those things when I could die with her? Why would I want to die without her when we could die in each other’s arms?”

She sneers in the face of his silence and takes a step back from him, turning to her bag. There’s a long piece of sharpened ivory in the boning of one of her dresses; the only weapon he hadn’t found and removed. It’s not tidy but it’ll do, she thinks as she pulls item after item out in search of it, better than letting him crack a few ribs in the fight if she has to do it hand to hand, damn his brutish strength. 

“You think it’s romantic?” he asks, genuine curiosity in his voice. 

“Isn’t it?” she challenges. She thinks of Anna, of the way she used to sigh when Villanelle would read her the classics; the way her eyes would flutter when she would speak of Persephone’s devotion to the god who took everything away from her and gave her eternal life in exchange. “What would you have me do?” she asks, abandoning her bag when Konstantin doesn’t answer right away. “Find another handler after you leave me? Freelance myself? Kill insipid men for more money than I could ever spend in my lifetime until I am so bored I hang myself in an ugly hotel room just to feel something?”

“No,” he says sternly. “I want you to live.”

“What life?” she snaps. “This one? Hiding in a hotel room like a coward? How do I live here? How do I live with what is in front of me?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. Perhaps the first truly truthful thing he has ever said to her. 

“You, who knew me when I was Oksana,” she says with disdain, like the word itself tastes foul, “you who knew me when I was nothing, you who knows me better than anyone alive; if you do not know and I do not know how to live then no one does and no one will, so what is the point?” 

He chews on his bottom lip. “What would Eve want you to do?” he asks after a moment. 

She laughs cynically at his desperate turn. “Eve who does not know me or love me?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “She would want me to die, I think. For the time being anyway. But that doesn’t matter, does it? That means nothing, the same as everything else.”

“Nothing,” he laughs. “You have never been nothing, Villanelle,” he tells her almost fondly before his expression evens out. “Eve does not define you.”

“Right and wrong,” she tuts, shaking her head. “I have never been nothing, true, but she is the only person who found me. How does that not define me?”

“She found you because you stopped running long enough for her to,” he growls. 

“Don’t do that,” she says coldly, making the colour in his face fade. “It doesn’t suit you to be intentionally stupid,” she tells him with a hard tone. “You know she had information before the polish girl, you know she found me before then.”

That in itself is impressive and something she will never forget, that in itself made her slow down enough with a desire to meet the person capable of such a thing. She was more reckless after, but Eve found her first, something Konstantin knows full well. 

She sighs loudly. She has grown bored of this conversation. Konstantin doesn’t have an answer for her, he doesn’t understand and she doubts he ever will. Eve is different and she is extraordinary and he will go into hiding long enough for him to think that they are safe and then she will decide what to do next. 

For now, she’s tired and hungry and she wants to be alone. She wants to go and look for Eve, or maybe to a bar, to look for someone with long curly hair, someone who will blush prettily when she turns her attention on them, someone who will beg her to take them home, someone who doesn’t think twice about what it means to want her. She knows that Eve wants her, that is unequivocally clear, but it’s clouded, constantly clouded by her supposed moral compass, her reluctance to realise what it means she is because she wants Villanelle in spite of everything else. 

It’s clouded and tonight she’s bored of it all. She’s sick of the occasional look of disgust on Eve’s face. She wants instant gratification just like the thrill that came when the gun went off. Villanelle: one, soon to be two with some pretty girls skin under the sharpness of her teeth. Eve: zero, probably still face down in the dirt, too stubborn to cry for help.

The difficulty is that she knows she’ll be empty again come the morning, she will before the girl falls asleep next to her in bed and that’s the problem. She has an itch that has been there her whole life but is different after Eve; it was persistent before but now it’s as loud as a siren, and Eve, _fucking_ Eve, is the only one, the _only_ one that scratches that. 

She finds the garment she was looking for as Konstantin waits silently behind her, her blunt nail picking at the sharp piece of boning at the bottom of the corset. Like Adam’s rib, she had thought when she’d slid it in before leaving London, needle and thread next to her to conceal her handiwork. She is Adam and Eve is… well. 

There’s a darkness inherent in Eve but she brought it out, her work made Eve chase and sink deeper into the grey. _Don’t forget; the only thing that makes you interesting is me._ Without her, Eve is nothing, just like her namesake was before Adam. 

It’s a funny sort of poetry then that she gave Eve this life, this desire, the thick, rich taste of the hunt; it was she who brought that forth, but that Eve with this knowledge and skill makes her feel like she does, like the world suddenly has hue, red and bold and drinkable. 

_Maybe she isn’t Adam at all_ , Villanelle thinks, piercing the expensive fabric with the end of the ivory so the point appears and punctures her skin. She watches the blood bead on the top of her finger. _Maybe she’s God instead_. Eve is who she is because of her, and she is who she now is because of Eve. She created the thing that makes her feel. Eve is her design, hers, hers, hers alone. No one else’s. Eve would have continued to be nothing without her, trapped in a boring marriage in a mediocre job. Without her there would have been nothing to make Eve any different to anyone else.

She raises her finger to her mouth, sucking the blood away and wrinkling her nose when the copper of it hits her tongue. Drops the dress back into the bag unceremoniously, turning around to Konstantin. 

“I am alive when I’m with her,” Villanelle says, pushing the weight of her gaze against Konstantin, the conviction of her words between her teeth. She is a true predator in that moment, not bothering to temper the way the edges of her body blur into something more animal. It’s something Konstantin recognises instantly and he takes a step back before he can stop himself. She smiles, pleased at the retreat. 

Anything without limits is infinitely more dangerous than things that do. He knows now, with the knowledge of the missing round, that she has none. _Dangerous_ , she thinks, _radioactive_ . _Destroyer of worlds_. 

“You haven’t been paying attention if you haven’t seen that,” she says emotionlessly, her expression a void. His fear makes her feel for a fleeting moment before it fades, just like everything else does. Everything but Eve. She takes a step forward, impressed when he doesn’t take one back. “The only time I am and ever have been, is with her,” she tells him, putting her finger back into her mouth to clean the blood away before she releases her finger with a _pop_ , her eyes never leaving his. “If you would truly have me leave that you’ve already killed me.”

“Playing stupid doesn’t suit you either, Villanelle,” he says with a resigned look in his eyes. “You’ve already made that decision, haven’t you,” he shrugs simply. “With her or without her, the end is the same. You should have finished it before she became something to you, but you didn’t. It doesn’t matter what I say or don’t say. You’ve already killed yourself.”

.


	2. Two.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our little game begins again, ma souris, she thinks, smiling with the thrill of it. 
> 
> Eve will come for her eventually; to kill her or fuck her, Villanelle isn’t sure yet. Maybe both. Either way, it is an inevitability.

#####  **Поживём – увидим.**

(we will live, we will see)

.

  


There is no mourning outfit in her things this time, she was so sure of how they would finish, so certain she wouldn’t need one; the plane tickets sewn into the bottom of her bag proof, so she buys one. 

She doesn’t bother going back to the ruins; she knows in her bones that Eve won’t be there anymore, the same way she knows that she’s not really dead. There are only two different parties who would have come for her and they will have come by now because as much as Carolyn keeps saying they’re on their own, Eve knows too much to let her slip into someone else’s hands. Villanelle isn’t sure who would have found her first and what they’ll do with her but she knows Eve will be safe by now, probably already hooked up to a drip, her eyes rolling back in her head with pain or the relief from it. 

_Our little game begins again, ma souris_ , she thinks, smiling with the thrill of it. Eve will come for her eventually; to kill her or fuck her, Villanelle isn’t sure yet. Maybe both. Either way, it is an inevitability.

She finds a bar with a name that she thinks Eve would have hated, takes a seat without removing the wide-brimmed hat she’d found in place of a veil. Her fingers drum on the sticky wood as she waits for someone to come and serve her, looking over her shoulder a couple of times to check for a tail. 

She doesn’t think anyone’s looking for her, she took from Konstantin’s farewell that the search had been called off with their separation, hers and Eve’s. That in itself only makes her more interested though; why are they such a threat together. What is it that they’re not telling her. Is it as simple as the recklessness that blooms when they’re searching for each other, or together? Is it what they know, or what they might put together if they ever compiled and consolidated everything they know about The Twelve and MI5? Is it that they become uncontrollable when they’re together? Volatile?

“Vodka,” she says to the bartender when he finally makes his way down to her, remembering to mask her accent at the last second. 

It’s so cliche, that the only thing she’ll drink willingly is something that reminds her so much of the home she’s never stopped trying to distance herself from, but it reminds her of Anna. It reminds her of the way she’d pour Villanelle who was then Oksana a small measure when she’d refuse pain killers after a playground fight, nursing a split lip with anything cold Anna had in the fridge. 

“Non,” she had said the first time, in French, before English was easier, pushing it away moodily. “Rien qui me fait sentir-“ _No, nothing that makes me feel-_

“I want you to have to have something for the pain,” Anna had said in reply, with just enough authority to make her heart flutter. “Either take the pills or the alcohol, I don’t care which, but it must be one.” 

“I just want-“ she had said pathetically, reaching for Anna, her hands, knuckles still bloody, grasping the wool of her cardigan before Anna had pushed them away. 

“You’ll keep wanting until you take something,” Anna had said flatly, gesturing to the glass and pills waiting for her on the table. 

Anna was strong-willed; it was why Villanelle was so drawn to her in the beginning. Stubborn, grumpy, cold until she was ready to be warm. Villanelle liked that. She liked the way the only thing she ever saw Anna soften for was her. She liked the way Anna made her submit before she gave her anything. 

She had snatched up the glass eventually, glaring at Anna, swallowing the measure in one gulp and hiding the sting of it as it ran down her throat and over the cut in her lip. She remembers being still until she felt the warmth of new blood and she had raised her hand to wipe it on her sleeve. 

“No,” Anna had said, her shoulders curling as she shuffled closer to Oksana who always wanted to be Villanelle, before she knew it to be an option. “No,” she had said as her fingers curled around her wrist like soft summer vines. “I can do the rest, _ma fille forte_ ,” she had hummed to Villanelle who was never really Oksana, only a shell waiting to be reborn. 

It used to be a dance, when Anna would take her home with someone else’s blood on her clothes, mixing with hers; a test of stubbornness, her scowling at Anna until she got bored of the game and gave in. Anna never used to lose that one, ever. Once, she pushed her out into the hallway, out of the apartment until Villanelle gave in, biting back the tears at Anna’s rejection until she’d drawn her back inside and peppered her cheeks with kisses when Villanelle, when _Oksana_ , had promised to be good. 

Vodka is disgustingly cliche just like her poor childhood and dead parents, but it reminds her of Anna so she’ll let the memory linger and the nostalgia cling to her a little while longer before she refuses to drink another drop of it ever again. 

Something catches her attention out of the corner of her eye and her head whips around, certain she’s seen a ghost before she realises the thick brown hair doesn’t belong to Eve but to someone else. The woman looks completely different when Villanelle turns to her; she’s much younger for a start, clearly European, and pleasingly receptive to Villanelle’s not overly-subtle staring. 

The woman walks past her, dropping her eyes with a blush when Villaneve’s gaze doesn’t falter. Her head turns around the room like she’s searching for someone she can’t see yet so Villanelle waits until she looks back in her direction before she pushes out the stool next to her, allowing a coy smile to creep over her features. 

“Would you like a seat while you wait?” Villanelle offers in a perfect, posh, English accent. 

The woman’s eyes watch her fingers curl around the back of the barstool, flicking up to Villanelle’s lips and then back down again. 

_You’re mine,_ her own voice hisses in her head, louder than the pounding music, triggered by the pause, the potential rejection. _No, you’re mine._ Fuck Eve Polastri, Villanelle snaps internally, burning the thought away, drawing a blush over her cheeks to make the girl feel more comfortable. 

“I don’t bite, but it’s okay if you don’t want to,” Villanelle adds, feigning embarrassment when the girl hesitates.

“Oh, no it’s not that,” she says prettily, her accent not far from Villanelle’s fake one. “I’m just… I’m supposed to be meeting someone here but…”

“But?” Villanelle enquires, masking her decidedly targeted interest with something more genuine.

The woman blushes again, endearingly rather than annoyingly naive. “I don’t know if actually want to,” she says quietly.

“Oh,” Villanelle replies, raising an eyebrow, turning her body to show her interest. “Why not? Not a blind date, is it?” The girl blushes deeper. “Ah,” she adds. “Tinder date?” 

“No,” she woman says quickly, chased at Villanelle’s questioning silence with a quieter, “Yes.” She shakes her head, rubbing the back of her neck with her palm. “God, how embarrassing, why on earth am I telling you this?”

“I must look trustworthy,” Villanelle says sweetly, forcing her smile up to her eyes. “Tell you what,” she adds, “you can sit here with me until you spot your date, and then you can decide if you want to meet… them, or whether you want me to help you get out of it.”

“Would you do that?” the woman asks, half-wary, half-touched. 

“Us girls have to stick together, don’t we?” Villanelle winks, looking down to her watch for the time. “I don’t have anywhere else to be, if you’d like me to stay here for a while.”

The woman shifts from foot to foot, clearly thinking over her offer. “Are you sure?” she says finally. 

“Of course,” Villanelle smiles, flashing the white of her teeth as she gestures to the stool again, the smile widening when the stranger sits. “What does he look like?” Villanelle asks as the woman folds her bag into her lap. “So I can keep an eye out for him.”

“Uh… she,” the woman replies shyly, not meeting Villanelle’s eye. 

Something sparks warmth in her chest and Villanelle beats back the smug smile waiting to creep over the edge of her mouth. “It’s okay,” she says soothingly, reaching to place her hand on the woman’s knee, the touch only fleeting. “I’m…” she pauses, biting her lip until tears come to her eyes, not continuing until she sees the woman move an inch closer in sympathy and curiosity. “My… girlfriend broke up with me, you know. That’s why I’m here, in Rome. Trying to forget her.” 

“Oh,” the woman says, her tone flashing with interest, her expression and body language changing ever so subtly but just enough for Villanelle to notice. “I’m sorry,” the woman offers gently, repeating Villanelle’s action back to her, reaching for her knee. 

“It’s fine,” Villanelle exhales, shaking her head like she’s trying to clear her tears. She indulges her curiosity, biting back the smile again when she finds the woman watching her intently. “It’s fine, really. She was… I loved her but she wasn’t ready to commit to me.”

“Well, I think that’s her loss,” the woman says ardently, squeezing Villanelle’s knee. 

Villanelle fakes a blush, ducking her head to mask her grin. “You don’t even know me,” she says from beneath the brim of her hat. “I might be awful.” 

“You seem the opposite of awful to me,” the woman asserts gently. She reaches for Villanelle’s hand, letting the contact linger until Villanelle looks up. 

“That’s very sweet of you,” Villanelle replies weakly, wiping at a stray tear she allows to escape. “Gosh,” she says, shaking her head. “This is supposed to be about you, not me.” 

“It’s quite alright,” the woman tells her, smiling. “It’s taken my mind right off being nervous.”

“Well good, that’s something, isn’t it?” Villanelle says through a watery smile. 

“It is,” the woman agrees brightly. She looks down, noticing for the first time that she’s still holding Villanelle’s hand. 

“Enough about me,” Villanelle waves, freeing the other woman’s hand from hers smoothly. It’s a test, the breaking of their contact, to see whether the interest is genuine or just pity. To see if she has any great urge to want to touch Villanelle again, whether she’ll reach for her first. “Tell me about your date,” she says breezily, landing her hand on the bar, close enough that it wouldn’t be difficult for the other woman to reach for it if she wanted to. 

“My date?” the woman asks, momentarily confused and distracted from her initial intention, much to Villanelle’s pleasure. 

“The woman you were meeting,” Villanelle offers helpfully. “Did she say she would wear something to help you find her?” 

“Oh,” the woman blushes again, so prettily and nothing at all like Eve. “She said um… “ the woman continues, “she said she’d wear a red blazer, and she has blonde hair in her photo. Pretty. A little like you, actually.”

“Red blazer,” Villanelle nods seriously. “Blonde hair. Pretty.” 

“Like you,” the woman adds quickly, meeting Villanelle’s eyes for a second before she drops them shyly. 

_Well, well, well_ , Villanelle thinks smugly as the woman inches her hand towards hers where it rests on the bar. 

“What should I do if I see her?” Villanelle asks innocently. 

“I don’t know,” the woman replies, genuinely unsure. 

“What do you want to do?” Villanelle questions patiently. 

“Honestly?” she asks, allowing her eyes to drop to Villanelle’s lips again. 

“Yes,” Villanelle nods earnestly. 

“I want to…” she says shyly, looking to where their hands almost touch on the bar. “Well, I’d rather like to stay here with you. If you don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Even polite enough to give her an out, Villanelle smiles. Eve wouldn’t do that. Eve isn’t polite. Eve is rude and hot-tempered and bleeding somewhere on the other side of town because she doesn’t have any manners. 

“What’s your name?” she asks the woman, holding the eye contact as she allows their fingertips to brush together for a split second. 

“My name?” the stranger repeats. 

“When your date arrives, I can tell her you’ve gone home feeling poorly,” Villanelle says smoothly. “Nip to the loo for five and I’ll send her away and then we can stay here. Your name might come in handy to do that, don’t you think?” She pauses, mimicking hesitation for dramatic effect. “If you want, that is,” she adds shyly. 

“I’d like that,” the woman nods quickly. “I’d like that a lot.” 

“Excellent…” Villanelle beams, pausing at the end of the sentence, waiting for the woman to fill the gap with her name. 

“Evelyn,” the woman offers, blushing when Villanelle’s gaze remains heavily on her face. 

“ _Evelyn_ ,” Villanelle smiles coyly, echoing it back. “What a perfect name.” 

“What’s your name?” she asks, reaching forward and allowing her hand to brush meaningfully against Villanelle’s, lingering for a moment before she decides not to draw it back. 

“Lucy,” Villanelle lies effortlessly, trying not to smile at the contact. “Lucille, if my mother is angry with me,” she adds, rolling her eyes, “but my friends call me Lucy.”

“What would you like me to call you?” the woman - Evelyn - asks with a slightly wicked smile, surprising her for a moment. 

Villanelle raises an eyebrow, impressed, sliding forward in her chair so their knees touch. “What would I like you to call me?” Villanelle asks herself before raising an eyebrow at Evelyn. “How about, whatever you want?”

  


.

  


It’s not difficult to get rid of Evelyn’s date when the woman turns up, one sharp threatening sentence in her own voice, the threatening depth that her Russian accent is capable of drawn out until the woman flushes and turns away without another word. 

_Shame_ , Villanelle thinks as she watches the girl leave, her ponytail flicking side to side as she makes her way hastily out of the club. She was pretty. She wouldn’t have minded the both of them, in truth. 

Evelyn is deeply thankful when she returns from the bathroom, letting her hand linger on Villanelle’s elbow before it slips playfully to her hip and she squeezes, offering Villanelle a dance in return. She can feel the heat of the woman’s hand through the rich fabric of her clothes, not far from Eve’s scar, and the thought makes desire swell in her belly like a rush of the tide. 

“You don’t owe me a dance for helping you,” Villanelle says firmly, breathing into the point of contact, watching as Evelyn’s eyes go dark. 

“No, but I want one,” Evelyn replies, bolder still than before, the courage of two glasses of champagne and Villanelle’s chivalry making her skin glow. 

“Well, isn’t that handy,” Villanelle breathes, leaning in to speak in the woman’s ear when the volume of the music around them increases, tilting her chin so her lips just graze Evelyn’s neck. “That’s exactly what I want too.” 

Villanelle lets herself be led to the dance floor, tempering the smile when Evelyn drapes her arms over her shoulders for a second before she turns smoothly, stepping backwards and pressing her back into Villanelle’s front, pulling her arms across her middle. She splays her fingers wide, waiting for Villanelle to thread hers in the empty spaces before she closes her hands, squeezing tightly. 

She moves like a dancer against Villanelle as they both let the music wash over them, every movement sinuous and dangerously smooth, her hips rolling, grinding, until Villanelle feels the warmth start to spill out from the middle of her chest and down to the end of her limbs. 

_Fuck Eve_ , she thinks as the woman brings Villanelle’s hand to the hem of her shirt, pulling it free so she can press Villanelle’s palm flat again her stomach. _Fuck Eve,_ she thinks as the stranger tips her head back against her shoulder, exposing her neck for Villanelle to sink her teeth into. _Fuck Eve_ , Villanelle thinks when she cranes her neck and arches her back and they kiss with a desperation that makes her growl. 

She snakes her hand up the woman’s front, between her breasts and over her collarbone until she reaches her neck. A red wave throbs out from her palm and for a moment she forgets where they are and who she’s really with and who she wishes it was and her fingers squeeze until she feels the tendons beneath them twitch and throb and struggle. Evelyn’s hand over hers snaps her out of whatever haze she’s in and she readies a fake apology before the woman’s hand tightens over hers, applying _more_ pressure, pushing the oxygen further away from her grasp. 

_Well, well, well,_ Villanelle thinks again, allowing the woman to dictate the release, tilting her chin to the side when she does so and biting hard over the throb of her pulse when Evelyn draws in a greedy breath. _Maybe she’ll get what she wanted out of the evening after all._

Villanelle drops her hand slowly, brushing the swell of her breasts on the way down, smiling when Evelyn arches up into her again, holding her hand at the top of her trousers. The crowd around them is thick enough and distracted enough that she’s sure she could kill the woman right here and let her slide to the floor like she did Bill before anyone noticed, let alone fuck her and get away with it, but she doesn’t mind if the girl’s prudishness means taking her away from here either. She doesn’t care, as long as it’s soon, as long as she can leave the pretty skin of her milky neck mottled with bruises; as long as she can watch her beg and plead and scream a name that isn’t hers before the night is over. 

Whether from hands or lips or teeth she doesn’t care, as long as it’s soon, soon, _soon_ because she’s been patient for so long and her self-control is too thin, too taut, ready to snap. 

“No one can see,” Villanelle husks, dragging the edge of her nail along the sensitive flesh of the woman’s stomach, smirking when the muscles twitch and fire. “If you-”

The woman’s hips buck up before she’s finished speaking and Villanelle’s hand moves without hesitation at the consent. She hooks her chin over the woman’s shoulder when she slips against the desire between her thighs, anchoring her back against her body, chuckling heavily at the depth of want she finds. Her hair tickles Villanelle’s cheeks as she leans back into the solidity of her body, her eyes shut and her lips parted. 

She looks delicious, Villanelle muses as she draws heavy circles against the warmth at her fingertips. Edible, almost. 

_Fuck you, Eve,_ she thinks to herself at the pleasant responsiveness of the body under her attention. _Fuck you. This could have been us, she could have been you but you wasted it. You made me shoot you. You made me do it._

_Fuck you, Eve Polastri_ , she thinks, biting hard on the other woman’s neck when she comes, the tang of her perfume sharp on Villanelle’s tongue. _Fuck you._

“Come back to my hotel,” the girl whimpers, holding Villanelle’s hand in place when she makes to move it away. “Please.”

Villanelles smiles wickedly against her shoulder, kissing the bare skin before dragging her teeth over the sticky flesh. “Again?” Villanelle says innocently. “I didn’t hear you.” 

“Lucille,” she growls, her voice desperately authoritarian, just like Anna’s used to be when Villanelle drove her to the edge of madness. Nothing like the antagonistic tone Eve so often uses for her. 

“Evelyn,” she says back in the same octave, the timbre of it thick, her Russian lilt slipping into the second to last syllable. 

“Take me home,” she says roughly, her body pushing against Villanelle’s, craning her neck, offering her-

“Will you give me everything?” Villanelle asks, her hand rising the base of the woman’s neck again. “Everything, Evelyn. I want everything.”

“You can have it all,” the woman who is not Eve moans in answer to her, her voice desperately truthful, the core of her split open in Villanelle’s arms. 

_See_ , she hisses to Eve’s subconscious, wherever she might be. _It’s not so difficult, don’t you see. Just drop the pretence. See how easy it is, Eve. See how good it feels when you do._

“All of it?” Villanelle muses, her breath warm against the woman’s neck. 

“Yes,” the body heavy against hers promises. “You can have everything, just take me home.” 

“Because you asked so nicely,” Villanelle hums encouragingly, dropping her hands to the woman’s waist, orienting her hips towards the exit before she leans in and whispers to her. “Lead the way.”

_Fuck Eve Polastri_ , she thinks once they push through the woman’s hotel room door and Villanelle pins her to the bed. _Fuck Eve_ , she thinks as she turns the body beneath hers into something less than human, the warm skin malleable and hers and soon covered in all the marks she would have left on Eve’s if she hadn’t been so stupid. 

_Fuck Eve_ , she thinks as the pushes the girl over the edge again and again, until the muscles in her arm ache. _Fuck Eve,_ she thinks jealousy as she imagines someone else cutting off her bloody clothes, someone else’s hands moving over her as they check for other damage. 

_Fuck you for making me think of you_ , she smiles as the emotion of _something_ washes over her. _Fuck you for making me feel. Fuck you for making me not want to turn it off._

_End_.

.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://tigerlo.tumblr.com),  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/tigerlo_) etc.


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